


Alpha Prompt Set

by wanderlustlover



Series: AU Hogwarts [2]
Category: AU Hogwarts, Batman (Comics), DCU - Comicverse, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-11-15
Updated: 2011-11-15
Packaged: 2017-11-06 18:17:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 48
Words: 9,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/421803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderlustlover/pseuds/wanderlustlover
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU Howgarts was a multi-fandom game where anyone from any canon could have been "tweaked" into being part of the Harry Potter Universe.</p><p>These are the prompts from the Alpha set. I wrote them in order of prompt numbers, once upon a time, but I'll try to sort them into a sort of timeline sense as I'm adding them up this time (if I have the time once they are all up). </p><p>Most of them are focused on Jo and Dean's relationship after she graduated Hogwarts, but some of them are about the years in school focusing on Sokka, Leah & Jo, too. (And some later writings, to throw Steph in!)<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Soft (#3)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Weaver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Weaver/gifts).



> Setting: Very early after they met the second time.

_WHD_ isn't soft.

It's isn't part of "his" MO.

But when Dean gets that look in his eyes, that smile across his face  \-- and he tugs her out of the bed, that she somehow stayed in all night  instead of leaving (it and him, again, so many times again),  promising her the best pub breakfast she's ever seen in London -- she  begins to wonder if she's getting that way.


	2. Chapter 2: Pain (#4)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Somewhere in the beginning, long before Dean has any idea who Sokka and Leah are, or that the loss of her best friends is a hole torn deep in her soul. He's got the hole figured out, but not the reason.
> 
>   
> 

  


He doesn't know what it is for a while.  
There are things she won't do. Won't have to do with.

Greenland. Quidditch. Potions talk. Pranks. Her childhood.  
Pirates and boats and anything involving home. Friends.

She distracts him with smiles and sex and conversations.  
But he keeps track of these things. Lists of them. Her lies.  
The way she lies openly. Obviously. Blantantly.

Almost asking for a fight.

From the girl who could charm anyone.  
Lie like she was born to do it, smiling the whole way.

And he thinks maybe that's how she's telling him the truth.  
That she can't. And maybe if he waits, she'll figure out if she can.

  



	3. Girl's Got a Bomb Fetish (#5)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How to hand Jo Harvelle.
> 
>   
> 

  


Dean would tell you later, you have to court Jo.

And he doesn't mean like dating. Dating was a step they skipped all together.  
Happens when you kick ass, don't see each other, and then trip right into bed.

No, courting Jo is more like courting a wild animal.  
With slow steps, and an awareness of savage scratches.

And moments of the most confusing clarity.

Like when she says she doesn't eat potatoes.  
That it's a waste. Because they make far better bombs.

  



	4. Rain (#6)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Still in order. Jo's spending most of her time at Dean's (when she isn't off on super secret missions for The Ministry as WHD). It happens to be raining on this day.
> 
>   
> 

  


It's one of the first times he wonders if she's moved in without asking.

When he comes home and she's still there. It's still rare enough it surprises him. One of the first three or four times. A good surprise, but still a surprise. The greater surprise that time isn't really her though.

Or even the fact she's sitting in his living room window, watching the rain dip down across all the roof tops around them. The hazy milaze of water seeming to cling into her hair and all around her.

No, the greatest surprise, is really, that he's sure there were window panes in that window when he left this morning. But he can't really get himself to care, when she turns her head and looks at him.

With a slow, warm smile that would make the sun pale.

  



	5. Chocolate (#7)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Completely calm and cool.

  


She likes chocolate like any girl, she says.  
But if he's asking for an opinion, she'll like it best licking it off of him.

Completely calm and cool, without even looking up from his book on his couch.  
Just the hint of her mouth trying not to smile, which makes it part of joke.

Or maybe completely not a joke at all. By the way she reads on.

And all Dean knows is that he has to find a way to make sure she never leaves.

  



	6. Happiness (#8)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When it hit them both, the first time differently. 
> 
> (The two weeks away is WHD 'Ministry Business.')
> 
>   
> 

  


For Dean, it's the morning she doesn't say her very final, very casual, unconcerned, very this is the last time, 'Well, see you.' It's that moment, hands in her jeans, no shift to her, when she says she'll be at The Black Cat for coffee in two weeks.

And when he questions the coffee part of it only, she just shrug, with that smile and says, she'll have missed it while she was gone. Before turning on her heel and walking a few steps away form the door, toward the stares, before she apparated mid-step, like it was old hat class.

For Jo, it's the moment she walks in and realizes, he's already there waiting for her.

  



	7. Telephone (#9)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> These were in reference to a history of Jo leaving letters for Sokka and Leah to find, when after seven years of living undercover she finally had to snap and start writing them, even if they couldn't write her back. 
> 
> (Coincidentally, if you're following along at home with a funky timeline of red arrows and happy post-its, this goes in the timeline about six months to a year after Dean and Jo break up the first go around.
> 
> Important notes that add here -- Leah went on to star in a Quidditch Team, while Sokka, the potions wiz went on to start creating dangerous, important potions for The Ministry. One of which reached Jo in early WHD Years, which is why for the bottom mention.)
> 
>   
> 

  


This is what the letters are really.  
An exaggerated game of playing telephone.

Of having to trust in the literally impossible. That even though she left them, without any word, without any warning, nearly seven years ago, and was only seen by Sokka once in that time, that they still want to hear from her.

That they will feel anything but fury and annoyance when she signs it simply 'J.' At the fact she can't be traced because of her work. That she can't leave an address because of her work. That she won't know anything unless they try to, unless the people gaurding her suddenly warn her people are trying to tail her.

That they are just like her. Holding on, hopelessly, even in the impossible. The way she went to every single one of Lee's quidditch games she was in country for. The way Sokka's first year, unstoppered bottle is still in her bed table.

That when she sends out a call. _A Hello, I'm still here._  
They'll pick up. With _We know. We've been waiting._

  



	8. Ears (#10)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back to very early Jo & Dean Round One.

  


In the begining she'd wake in the middle of the night to stare at him. Having the audacity to be lying in his own bed (because it was never in hers), in his own house (because hers was never an option) _breathing_. Because she didn't do this. The staying over the whole of the nights.

Or really this, at all. Sure there were people. More rarely than consistantly. And it was more often than not some kind of colleague who had some kind of understanding. Of why this wouldn't work work. Why pursuit would not happen on either side. Why sometimes you just needed contact.

Except then came the days when she'd wake up, just as he'd fallen asleep. The newest noise in the bedroom when he'd gotten back home too late to manage being awake for it, or having work tomorrow. And she'd smile, yawn into her pillow and fall right back off. More content for the notice.

But the the lasting ones, the ones that seemed longer and larger, were l ater. When she'd lay in her own bed, listening to the endless silence of her own bedroom, her own house. The stale unmoving air. The pronouncement so firm, and so clear. That she was utterly, and entirely, alone.

  



	9. Names (#11)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Winchester's and Harvelle's, even in the Harry Potter Universe, they mean something over in America. Where they didn't meet this time. But it still matters. It's still in them. Still attached in their blood and their names.
> 
>   
> 

  


They talk about names, so late one night it might as well be morning, long enough for beers and then coffees, when the subject doesn't want to be put to bed or that they don't want to put the night down either.

About what their names mean over in a world where there is no Capital "M" Magic, but there is 'm'agic and supernatural and evil. The legacies of their families and how far back they go. Half sprawled with cushions and pillows (that are more theirs than his now), as they wove the envisioned ideas of who they might have been if.

If the letters didn't come. The schools. And the Capital 'M' Magic.

And they talk about how those people might have been. Someone who isn't the girl who isn't her name and never won't be, or the boy who is a whisper wrapped up in the mysteries of being unspeakable. Pondering whether it would have been easier, or harder, simpler or more complicated.

Whether they still would have found each other.

And she really wants to believe him, when he says even if there wasn't magic, even if he was blind, he still would have seen her, found her.

  



	10. Sensual (#12)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He doesn't have to share it with anyone.

  


She doesn't see it. At all.

She even tells him she doesn't know who she is somedays.  
She's been so many other people, they mix together and become her.

But he doesn't believe her. He knows the her, when all the masks come down. When all the files are closed, and all the requirements have been filled. The girl whose hair falls from behind her ears while she reads, one foot tucked under her, leaning down toward the pages in her lap as though to breathe in the words, to fall into the paper.

The girl who reaches out to touch the petal of a flower when she's walking down a street, who smiles at the vendor, like sunshine coming forth from snow, even when she shakes her head about buying it, and he knows she saw one somewhere else, if not where.

It's in how she chooses to wear his shirts to gets glasses of water at night, even if her clothes are closer, and how the bottoms of them brush her thighs. And how her even though she's always so still at work, or right after working, that when she's relaxed, her finger long and smooth and tiny, the tips of fingertips travel over everything.

Every tiny little thing she does that she never sees.  
He collects them while she isn't even looking.

And never has to share them with anyone.  
Not even Jo herself, right next to him.

  



	11. Death (#13)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set about 3 years after Jo & Dean break up in Round One. 
> 
> Premise Explaining: During their being together, Dean gifted Jo with his amulet and was gifted a globe that a small drop of her essence was tied to, so that it blinked just faintly enough to tell him where in the world she was. 
> 
> One night the light sputtered and tried to go out (during an interesting other setup). This was three years after she vanished on him (after the horrible realization). Dean obviously comes to the rescue, which brings us to.  
> 

  


\-- graphic not mine, comment to claim

He thought the worst thing possible was his life without Jo in it.  
Was trying to find any meaning, aside from Sam, once she was gone.

But watching her lie there in that hospital bed -- still and silent and so pale, her eye lashes not flickering, the pulse at her throat fluttering so slowly, her chest, where his amulet, _his amulet_ , lay, for some reason three years later, rising only barely with the shallowest breaths -- he knew he was wrong.

Even if nothing else made any sense. He knew one thing for certain.

The worst thing would be an entire world without Jo Harvelle in it.

  



	12. Sex (#14)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Once again back to the beginning of Jo & Dean Round One.
> 
> (With subtle reference to how when they met Dean didn't know Jo was WHD.)
> 
>   
> 

  


Isn't really where it started.  
No, that was with a shotgun in his back.  
And being sent away because WHD was coming.

It wasn't where the status quo changed either.  
Because sex really didn't mean that much.  
Even if it was distracting from her day.

But she let herself believe.  
At least for a little while, that was.  
That maybe that was all she was here for.

  



	13. Touch (#15)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More intense commentary on Dean trying to figure out the walls of Jo, and ghosts (Leah & Sokka) that she carries around but never speaks of.
> 
>   
> 

  


In the beginning it's such a very tenuous thing.

In certain moments she'd be all come hither, with her smile and her bright, bright eyes, and kissing and unable to not try to touch all of his skin at once.

Or in relaxed moments she'd stretch out somewhere, on the floor or the bed or the couch, just to brush his skin while reading files or papers or letters she couldn't share.

And in these it's hard believe the stories that, no, really, she's been utterly alone these last six years. No close friends, no long relationships. Because she is so drawn toward some kind of touch, even when she's distracted. Maybe even especially when she's distracted.

But there were, also, the random enough days when she'd look at him venomously if he tried to reach out and touch her without invitation, without provocation. As though this whole avenue was suddenly, just this second, a one way street and only one person was in charge of whether _she could be touched anymore._

Which is another note toward being sure there are stories he hasn't heard.  
Names and faces and places that put these invisble scars where they are.

  



	14. Chapter 14: Weakness (#16)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One of the first takes on the moment that ended Jo & Dean Round One.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A trip to America where Jo brings Dean home for the first time, and Ellen pulls her aside (much like canon) to tell her she should be with Dean, and blurts out by the end that his father got her father killed. In disagreeing and sticking up for Dean over her mother, she marches down the stairs, only to realize he's known all along (or for a few weeks at least.)
> 
> Added to it the wonder of how sometimes magic happens in HP Universe under overwhelming emotion.

One of the problems with love, real love, is that it is messy.  
And something Dean chose to stay very, very far away from.

His weakness in the end wasn't that he could not tell her.

Or would not have. Eventually. Because she did deserve to know, and he would have told her. He was still trying to go about figure out how he would it. Because it was her father. And his father. And neither of those were ever completely simple, blurtable topics even in the very best of perfect scenarios.

His weakness in the end wasn't that he could not tell her.  
It wasn't even that he wanted to get out of being the one to.

It was that look in her eyes, when he realized she knew.  
It was not wanting to see that look in them. Ever.  
That dazzling fury steeped in radiating pain.

He hadn't wanted her to have either of those.

Even before the moment the world stopped.  
Charging down the stairs, meaning to.  
And then she'd stopped.

Moving. Speaking. To him.

And whatever ground she'd had left cracked.  
Went in soundless horror no anger could conceal.  
Before she faded away, like a ghost, right before his eyes.

  



	15. Tears (#17)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes places right after #16, from her pov instead of his.

  


She doesn't make the decision to cry.

It's a dribble from the center of her. Flecks of an atom bomb.

Just like she didn't choose to appear wherever this is. With it's blurry green hills and tall dark trees. But she'll go on standing there all the same, crying, for about ten minutes, without moving her hands from the fists at her sides to brush them off her cheeks, without looking around her, for about four minutes.

Because that's how long it takes her to even recognize the thought that she should figure out even what country she is standing it. Or how it is she got here. (And how she'll ever be able to even look Dean again.)

  



	16. Tears (#17 - B)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With reference to the bottle mentioned in [Prompt #9, Telephone](http://archiveofourown.org/works/419638/chapters/699193)
> 
> It's been nearly two-three years since she left her best friends for her covert job, following in her father footsteps. (The dolphin is Katara's symbol, which is always on everything Sokka produces.)
> 
>   
> 

  


That day goes so terrible after the first scene.

Sparring turns into a full on match that break's a man's arm and has Cain holding her against a wall screaming at the top of her lungs about what the hell was wrong with her. And she walked away, without apologizing, without explaining.

She only made it another hour or two before she had to leave, had to get out, not even giving a damn that she was now jepordizing required mission prep time. An early mission she still had to lick boots and kiss ass to even be allowed to have, to even get to grant them the glory of understanding how ready she was.

It's a miracle she makes it through the rest of the day without breaking someone else. For as simple a thing as even looking in her direction. Because the whole world is waiting to be set on fire. And by the time she realizes how bad it is, she locks herself in her house

And tries like hell to sleep. A sleep that won't come.  
That won't be silent. That won't let her alone.

And after two hours of it, she digs through her things dropped in this pile in the doorway to her bedroom, furious searching for it. It was in a pocket. Somewhere. And when her hand clenched around it she meant to lob it at a wall. Break it. Smash it into a thousand pieces. But she couldn't let go.

She stood there panting into the silence, before dropping back onto her bed. Only noticing that she was shaking because her gaze fell on the bottom of the bottle. On the way the dolphin wouldn't stay still. Almost looked like it was wobblingly swimming.

And then a tear fell on the bottle. Was she crying?  
She didn't think she was -- No. No, the only thing she thought.

As she watched the tear trickle across the blue glass, across the glass and into the crevices of that etched dolphin, etched by hand she was sure each time, was this was the first time in three and half years that any part of him had held any part of her.

  



	17. Speed (#18)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes places right before [Prompt #13 -- Death](http://archiveofourown.org/works/419638/chapters/699229)
> 
> That nifty/funny little situation I said Dean was in. 
> 
> (Remember it is _three years_ since she vanished and never returned.)  
>  (Also, this brings us up to reference that he's seen it flicker once before this, too.)
> 
>   
> 

  


He doesn't think about it even.

He'd stood up to get them drinks, in the middle of a joke, and the flicker light had caught his eye.

He tried his damnedest not to watch the globe. Because it was one thing to keep the damned thing. One thing to not be able to chuck it out the window, the way she chuck him, even if he might have deserved it. But no good could come of watching that steady, tiniest lit, dot, flit across the globe, perfectly fine, going about its life and mission.

Except that.

He knows every inch of his house.

Especially better in these last three year.

And nothing from that corner flickers. It doesn't.

Making him look. In that area. That bookshelf. That globe.  
Where the smallest light, only if you know to look for it, flickers.  
Faint as he's only seen it flicker once before. Faded for seconds.  
Then a blink of light, flickering, fading, to flicker again, so faint.

And he doesn't care about how many weeks of effort he's put in here.  
He doesn't care about her confused look when he says he has to go.  
Doesn't care about how many ways this is not being asked for.

All he cares about is making it there in time.

  



	18. Wind (#19)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jo looking back from an unmentioned time frame on Sokka during their years at Hogwarts (and how he was brought home with her for her Father's funeral in Second Year.)
> 
>   
> 

  


She hates a lot of things. For a long time. Irrationally.

She remembers this. From when she was twelve. In Second Year. And the way Sokka would handle her like a fragile piece of cracked glass, in that way only he would. With massive smiles and too much hugging and exaggerated pushing her into everything.

But also that look at the edge, if she ever looked toward whatever he was trying to get her to. Waiting on the edge of a breath to see if she'd destroy it the next second, simply because she did see that she did care about it, simply because nothing was worth caring about if her father was did.

(Nothing, that was, he noted, except Sokka.

Who was drug to America. To her family. The funeral.

And who was the only person she'd sort of apologize for shouting at. In that way. In her way. All sad copper eyes and defeated almost desperate drop to her shoulder, trying to find the words. And he'd just smile, that massive smile and drag he r out to do something else, because he didn't need her to find them.

And trusted she would at some point. While swearing a new storm at something or someone else she hated for still liking.)

It's like that. Again. Except there is no Sokka. And no Lee. (And no...)

And so she hates thing, irrationally, holding on to them.

Even the autumn wind and the smell of snow.

And all the things that made her whole.

  



	19. Freedom (#20)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Present Day!/Future! 
> 
> After Jo & Dean fall into bed together in Round Two, this is how Dean wakes up & how they both react to this sudden turn of events.
> 
>   
> 

  


He wakes up with a jolt so hard it shakes the solid, postered bed. And she doesn't even need to see his face before she says --

"I'm still here."

Still here. Laying behind him. Having watched in the darkness across all the last hours, until, as his shoulders tightened, breathing quickening, he'd arched up suddenly. Wondering if he'd even realized he'd murmured her name before rocketing ceiling-ward.

Laying there still as he turned, as though to make sure. To follow her voice. To see her silloutiette, and the unfamiliar room. And in the inky darkness of that second story bedroom, to wonder if in the light whether his expression would be more angry or relieved or embaressed, as he sunk back to the bed, twisting the covers as he turned toward her.

Turned but said nothing, even though he must have heard.  
Nothing still when he'd sunk back down into the bed either.

And Jo whispered, for both of them, maybe.  
Without crossing t he space between.  
So very quietly into that chasm.

"I know. I couldn't even close my eyes to sleep."

And though she thinks that might be it.

Because this, these admissions, whatever they are, aren't about the sudden firestorm that happens when he kisses her, or the confessions about not still being in, but about never for a single day even falling out, of love. They are about scars. The ones they've given and made each other live it, and still have in the presence of one another.

So that might be it. Where the night goes from silence back to sleep.  
And to whatever she was doing, lying here, watching that wasn't sleep.  
(She'd slept during those other two thousand, one hundred, ninty days.)

But he reached out, and drug her in.  
So familiar and possessive and sudden.  
Like as she's always belonged right there.

But when they were both holding each other as though the grip of hands to bruise cou ldn't be hard enough, her face buried right into his collar bone, the smell of him, and the death grasp of her arm over a side and down his back, and feel of his jaw tight digging in against the crown of her head, arms crushing her close that she wonders.

If this is what being free is about the second time around,

after when you've learned, and lived, what hell can be.

  



	20. Life (#21)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back to Round One, maybe half a year in.
> 
>   
> 

  


Even if she's been alone for six years, he makes her feel like she's had it easy.

In America she was surrouned by people, who laughed and taught her what they could, watching her mother glower and her father dote on her like she was his personal sun.

In England, she was encouraged in every single aptitude she portrayed. Shoved into the lime light if she only yearned in the direction of it. Even Elite Training's challenges weren't hell.

But, tracing the scars on the back of his hand, catching that tone anytime he talks at all about that school, or listening to him talk about John, keeping them ostracized from even the knowledge of the community in that car, she can't help the possessiveness or anger.

That edge in her voice, when she links her fingers in his, curling his hand around the back of hers, to raise it to his cheek, and say to him, as though there is no other world but him ( _because there isn't_ ), "We'll make the rest of it better, you and me. Together."

  



	21. Jealousy (#22)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Early AU Hogwarts game, when Sokka and Dean meet and they just barely have an idea who each other are in Jo's life.
> 
>   
> 

  


Sokka and Dean.

It's harder to decide whether it's jealousy or hatred.  
Because it isn't like she can choose not to notice at all.

But really, she doesn't care how long they want to spend comparing their penises, and glowering at each other, over who hurt her worse (when she knows _she_ made the worst of the choices out of all three of them), so long as neither of them ever gets stupid enough to try and keep the other out of her life.

  



	22. Hands (Prompt #23)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes places at the same time as [Prompt #13 -- Death](http://archiveofourown.org/works/419638/chapters/699229), after [Prompt #19 -- Wind](http://archiveofourown.org/works/419638/chapters/699268)
> 
> While Jo is lying in the hospital bed, not having woken up, and Dean is seeing her for the first time in three years, after rescuing her in such a state.
> 
>   
> 

  


It was one of the things he stared at in the hospital.

It's one of those things you'd never noticed about WHD. And one of the things that always mananged to surprise him about Jo, at something of a regular occurence. As WHD, whether in person or myth, she's so blown up, so other, so larger than a normal life.

As Jo herself, she lived in so much space, so much brilliant, fiery vivacity, no matter what her emotion was, sucking up all the air and demanding every inch of the world around her be part of her retinue. Every person, every article a domino in her construction.

And he remembers, standing at her bed, once they've stuck in and turned on all the machines. Those days when he'd come home and find her asleep in a chair, or on the couch, and for some reason he'd notice her hands, holding a file or the blanket. So small. These hands. So small for a girl who lived so incredibly big.

Who even in his three yearsof invente d memories of what she must now be doing was still stomping down the high way of life, kicking in doors, breaking faces and taking names, was not this small. Did not have thesse hands. So cold, and so thin and so pale, it was almost like a lifeless child's inside of his when he had needed to look at something that was not his amulet, or her face.

  



	23. Taste (#24)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Dean & Jo are over in Round One.
> 
>   
> 

  


The first boy she kisses after Dean --

And he is 'a boy' because of that dopey, deer in the headlights, never chased the edge of dawn, so soft on the edges he's everything that she's never wanted to even consider waste a breath no less than a conversation on

\-- makes her want to puke so much more than the bottle of tequila before getting to it.

  



	24. Devotion (#25)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Present Game Time / Future Happy World Times
> 
> Unalterable truths.
> 
>   
> 

  


Dean may have her for the rest of time.  
Head. Hand. Heart. Every choice, every time.

But Sokka's face will _always_ come first when she hears this word.

  



	25. Forever (#26)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first time Jo wakes up after being rescued by Dean. ([Prompt #13 -- Death](http://archiveofourown.org/works/419638/chapters/699229), after [Prompt #19 -- Wind](http://archiveofourown.org/works/419638/chapters/699268)) 
> 
> And, yeah, I totally went there, at the end. Plus, there are a handful more middle chapters, too, and you'll notice some missing people surprise guests.
> 
>   
> 

  


The world is a blurry blinding mess when she finds her eyes. Blinking against the most horrid onslaught of light that man or god or beast ever realized. When the next awareness is that shirking from being blinded hurts like a bitch.

Everything hurts like a bitch. Like she was run over by The Express.

Which makes closing her eyes, tight and tensing both the smartest and stupidest thing ever. Every clarifying down to distant noises. Quiet beeping and whirring noises. The smell of high alcohol aniseptic.

And leather. And a type of cologn she'd recognize....well, blind.

Her eyes flickered opened, blinking rapidly, wincing, to see a pile of torn rags on the bedside cabinet. No, not rags, torn tattered t-shirt pieces. Her heart sputtered, ragged and fast, making a machine next to her start screaming a shrill death cry into her head. That she was still wincing away from as someone ran in.

"Oh, good, you're awake. Your friends will be so relieved."

"Where am-" Except she knew that one. If she was in so much pain. And people in pastel colored nurse outfits were talking to her like that. She pressed her eyes together, trying to remember what happened last. She remember the slam of pain, and that moment of falling back so hard she thought she might have broken something in her back.

"How did I get here." Who was supposed to be relieved. No one knew.

"Another of your Ministry guys. Didn't get his name. Green eyes, strong jaw--"

"Leather cloak," Jo cut in, looking a the pile of shreds again.

"And not the best on home matience medicine." The nurse grinned.

Jo didn't quite frown, but she never joined the joke. "Is he-?"

"He left yesterday, right before the other two got here. I have to get the doctor, but I could send in them in if you don't try to get out of the bed or overexert yourself?"

Jo stared at the machine next to her bed, getting to the tubes in he r wrist, never answering the question. Trying not to acknowledge that she knew exactly _who_. Exactly _how_. But mostly, _why_. This waking alone, years later, with that scent everywhere, seemed more like a heart-shattering proof of never and forever than any barren midnight.

Completely unable to open her mouth when Lee and Sokka hurried in, more like someone was on fire than someone was past the worst point, to find her with a fist around the amulet at her throat, trying so damn hard not to tear up as everything in her body seemed the lesser pain.

Unable to talk entirely for a minute, while they told her again and again everything would be fine.

  



	26. Blood (#27)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jo postulating on her world, on the Hunters that don't know she's working for The Ministry super secretly, and who she could have been in another world, another life (like, I don't know, _canon_ ).
> 
>   
> 

  


Her thoughts on it are always a little disjointed. Family is more than blood. Family is less than blood. There's a whole community that doesn't quite know why Bill & Ellen's daughter never end up in the lifestyle, even though she was raised.

Doesn't know she's busy stomping on throats, wearing other faces.

Probably thinks she went off to her fancy boarding schools and never came back.

And in some part of that she also feels disconnected when she comes home. Comes back.

To the place she always belonged, always knew in her blood was hers. Except the letters came, and she learned even more who she could be, was meant to be. Like her dad. but her dad's been gone more than a decade, and every time she visits her mom she wonders, who she might have been if the path had forked the other way.

If there'd never been Sokka or Lee or Hogwarts or Elite Training or Dean.

It's where she came from. Family is blood. Even when you don't know.

And it's why its where she comes back to first at twenty-four.

  



	27. Sickness (#28)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two or three weeks after Jo vanishes (Prompt 16 -- [Weakness](http://archiveofourown.org/works/419638/chapters/699246) & Prompt #17 -- [Tears](http://archiveofourown.org/works/419638/chapters/699248); wherein Jo learned about how her Father died, and that both her Mother & Dean knew) he tries to put up a fight. 
> 
> This is in her work place. Her tiny lackey person makes me envision Marshall from Alias. Also, the first time in the prompts I mentioned what Dean's job was/where it was in The Ministry.
> 
>   
> 

  


"There's an Unspeakable asking about you."

Jo shrugged, taping her hand up. "I'm sure you know what to do."

The guy with little purple cloak and nerdiest glasses, cleared his throat, uncertainly anxious.

Jo looked at him, narrowly. "That is your job, isn't it? Keeping people from finding me?"

"You want me to do that with him? But I thought--"

"Yeah. Well. No one pays you to think for me."  
She said too hard. Standing, flexing her hands, ready.  
If anything he looked more stunned than hurt by her snap.

Confused, like he was seeing someone who hadn't been there. For months.

Jo huffed as she stood up. Walked away. She was going to need this practice even more now.  
Just to drown out acknowledging for the barest second Dean was all she thought of.

And nothing at all that she could handle outside of the barest thought now and then.

  



	28. Melody (#29)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She was still raised in a Hunter's bar until the age of 11 (and the arrival of an owl with a special letter) and she still went home for holidays and between school years. Some things never leave you.
> 
>   
> 

  


It's like a song she never really shakes off. Her childhood dreams.

She still has muggle newspapers sent to her weekly.

She still circles events, like her mother, in a red marker.

Still cuts out articles and mails them to those who know what to do.

  



	29. Star (#30)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A silly good moment in Round One, somewhere in the middle.
> 
>   
> 

  


She turns four shades of red, when he picks up the timble, with the raise of his eyebrow.  
Teasing her about how he was pretty sure she couldn't sew anything except wounds.

And then asking her what several times while she covered her face.

"It's not for sewing."

"Pretty sure it is. It's a thimble."

Her response was a mumble. Still pink.

"Yep. Still a thimble." He said again. "Wearing it like this."

Even if he had it on his thumb. And that obnoxiously smug look.  
The one she really loved, if it wasn't. "Going to keep doing this until you explain."

"It's Peter Pan." Jo said chagrin, even as she reached out to steal it from him.

But he dodged her, holding up high. "Peter Pan." How very un-Jo. Really.

"It was from my Dad." Beat. "When I was really young. Before the knife."

"From when I was worried--" she shifted, almost like a nervous twitch. The kind she never had as WHD or Jo. The smallest remnant of that child buried down somewhere. "--about if I wasn't like him when I grew up."

Stupid infuriatingly cute look on Dean's face, she wrinkled hers at.

"He gave it to me, saying that no matter what I was or wasn't, to dream 'big' and never let anyone or anything stop me. You know?" She gave a shrug, trying to look nonchalantly not so awkward. "Second star to the right, and straight on til morning. And all that crap."

Still that smile, as he held looked at it still held over her head. "It's better as a kiss."

And Jo's mouth opened. Closed. Open again. Rueful.  
"I don't even want to know how you know that, do I?"

  



	30. Home (#31)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Prompt 19 ([Wind](http://archiveofourown.org/works/419638/chapters/699268)), Prompt 13 ([Death](http://archiveofourown.org/works/419638/chapters/699229)) & Prompt 22 ([Hands](http://archiveofourown.org/works/419638/chapters/699312))
> 
> Jo is in the hospital, this is another middle chapter before she wakes up (in Prompt 26, [Forever](http://archiveofourown.org/works/419638/chapters/699335)), we now have the arrival of her "Friends" mentioned in 26.
> 
>   
> 

  


Dean couldn't have missed it if he was trying.

"We're looking for Jo--"

"Jo Anna-Beth Harvelle." A man broke in. So loud everyone heard it.

"Sir, do you have clearance to be here?" The nurse asked, in that nasally voice. As he felt some relief that someone had finally answered the summons he sent out. But didn't step out of the adjoining hallway, even to clarify what the scuffling noise was.

"Of course, I have clearance. I'll find it. We were told to be here. Where is she?"

"Are you two family?"

There was a such of air, before the first voice, a woman's, said, "We're what counts as it."

"That isn't how--"

"Is she even awake?" The man again, the sudden edge of hysteric panic in that last work. Before it turned sharper. "I will come through this desk and you if I have to."

"Sokka," The woman snapped. "Godrick's sake, keep your damn shirt on."

And Dean knew it, even as the nurse suddenly asked, "Aquam?"

Wh o they both had to be. Somehow she'd gotten them back.

"Of course I am." Was indignant.

The two of them. The names he'd had to prize from Jo.  
Like they were a pearl she was hoarding at her center.

"And Leah Ross?"

"Yes."

"You could have said that first. You're her emergency contacts. And an Ellen Harvelle. Is she--"

"-in America still. She's coming." The man cut her off. "Now. Where. Is.--"

"You need to understand--"

"We would if you'd stop yammering." Her 'Lee' again.

"They've done all the spells they can. She's -- It's all up to her now."

For a second there was an errie silence Dean's was sure would be broken by the man's voice. But it wasn't. There was this overwhelming nothing. And then it was her again. The woman. Slightly more hurried, and slightly more distracted. "Which room."

"Four-thirteen but you shouldn't--"

Was lost. Entirely in the sudden slap of two pairs of feet. Running.

That dashed past the opening of the hallway where he was leaning on the wall.

He didn't look up. He didn't look out. He didn't want to see them. Didn' t want to know what they looked like. Didn't want them as another part of this horror show.

She deserved them. The people who'd go through a desk and people just to get to her. Just to hold her too small hands and count each shallow breath. Those ghosts she prized over her own life sometimes. She deserved them. Them.

More than the man fading from the hallway, because he couldn't bare even the idea of watching those eyes, more blinding than the sun, or any of her injuries, opening, fuzzy with pain and magic and medicine, confused only until realization would transform her entire face into a scowl when she saw he was there, too.

  



	31. Confusion (#32)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Present Day Game -- Where Jo is the new caretaker of The Three Broomsticks, where The Order of The Jobberknoll is meeting. Which she is running, and where Sokka and Lee are members (as they are also professors at Hogwarts), and where the Winchesters brothers have to report to for each meeting. 
> 
> Jo gets confused sometimes because of all the red tape. But mostly because Dean returns the morning after each meeting to have a cup of coffee in The Three Broomsticks every single time. 
> 
> (Also, first unspoken reference to "Be safe." What it means and why it important.)
> 
>   
> 

  


She forgets for a second sometimes. When he's laughing or smiling.

That he really isn't here for her. Wouldn't be without orders.  
Without Meetings and crazy Traitors and Dictators.

Until he stands up, putting the coffee cup down.  
And waits. Like a man waiting to get shot. But waits still.

For her to say those two words. Like they have to now. Not a mistake.

But this bullet they keep biting, as though it has to be said, or no one can move on.

  



	32. Fear (#33)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Prompt 30 ([Home](http://archiveofourown.org/works/419638/chapters/699420)), which brought us up to Jo, having been rescued by Dean, still being unconcious in a hospital bed, in a hospital where Lee and Sokka have recently broken on to the scene. 
> 
> Here is another scene from that time frame. Still before Jo wakes up. 
> 
> (Also, brings into the timeline, that Jo had only recently reconnected with them post Dean's Break-up & Post the letters in Prompt 9 - [Telephone](http://archiveofourown.org/works/419638/chapters/699193).)
> 
>   
> 

  


"Hey."

"Hey you."

Leah looks up, but he isn't talk to her.

"You can't die. Remember. You promised."

Back when they were all sixteen, and fearless, and immortal.

Before he knew how devestating it was to lose a sister.

But the only answer is the stupid machines still.

And so Leah comes to the other side.  
Leaning over the back of his chair.

Sets her chin on Sokka's shoulder.  
So they can watch her together.

The way they always have.

Because two wouldn't be right.

They all only just found each other.

  



	33. Lightning/Thunder (#34)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Which brings us to how Jo ran into Sokka & Lee again after seven years of not seeing them (and nearly a year after Dean & she broke up, for the placement of Prompt 9 - [Telephone](http://archiveofourown.org/works/419638/chapters/699193))
> 
>   
> 

  


"I don't care if you fire me."

"Your cover---"

"Is fucked. Can be fucked." Jo shoved a cart full of supplies out of her way. "Can fuck itself and the goddamn fucking horse that has ridden it hard for nearly a fucking decade. Sixteen ways from bloody fucking Sunday."

"You can't do this."

"So curse me." She kept walking down that hallway faster and faster. And as though to make the point stellarly clear, she looked over. Copper eyes flashing, "And we'll take out the entirity of an ICU floor just so you can prove a red tape point."

"You wouldn't dare."

"Yeah, I would. For her, I'd take out the whole building," Jo snapped, glaring a nurse closing a door, out of her way. Taking that same knob and shoving it open, while still finishing those words, like the first bow in a duel while looking at Cain.

Before she turned her head to glance in, too. Toward the two people there.  
One in the bed and one at it side both of them looking pretty shocked to be honest.

All fire and brimstone, her face and her eyes and that cloud of golden hair swirling around her shoulders, around the long cloak and blue jeans, like a norther in full flight, until her gaze stopped on the two people in the room. And it softened, almost so noticably. Mouth curving like maybe it hadn't been seven years, and three.

When she forgot one of her bosses in the door entirely to say, "Hey," like maybe it'd only been seconds.

  



	34. Bonds (#35)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place pretty much right after the last one, at some point when Lee is sleeping (as injuries to your eyes do that).
> 
>   
> 

  


"No lies," Sokka says.

After tugging her into his arms. Again. For the hundreth time this weekend. He was making a habit of this. Lee's fallen back asleep under good pain drugs again and its as good a time as any. To make sure she's real, again, and apparently to give her more rules for her homecoming.

And Jo grimaced, tilting her head to one side, out from under his chin.

"There's a whole lot I can't tell you." 

And the way she says it makes it more clear. What she's really saying. That there's by far more in what she can't tell him than will ever be in what she can tell him.

"Well, then just don't tell me that. Or tell me that. Specifically. But no lies."

Jo seemed to consider that. A breath escaping her slowly, into his clothes, into his chest. The rise and fall of his lungs and his heart against her cheek when she leaned in against him. Just for a second. Just to feel how real he was again. Not some phantasm. Not some dream. No t some piece of lucidity gone bonkers.

As though he could absorb her there if she didn't move again.

"No lies." Quiet. But a promise. To be herself. For him. For them.

  



	35. Market (#36)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set back in the beginning of Round One, two weeks after Prompt 8 -- [Happiness](http://archiveofourown.org/works/419638/chapters/699188)
> 
>   
> 

  


When she walks into The Black Cat -- that first day, two weeks laer, that it's about coffee and not about falling into dark, shady corners, and she might be letting the thought this might be able to be something more than shady corners exist for longer than a second or two, and he's there waiting already -- she's already smiling.

Hell, she's even smiling when she throws herself, over the arm of a stuffed chair, letting her feet swing up over one side. Catching his sudden blast of very badly tampted down panic-uncertainty because he'd been ogling the barista the whole time she walked over, never seeing her arrive.

"She's a peach. Married, though. Three rug-rats."  
Jo grinned. Kept going even when he tried to open his mouth.

"But at least now I know we have the same good taste in women."

It's not what he's expecting obviously. And maybe it's why he doesn't looks away.

  



	36. Technology (#37)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry Potter Universe has The Best Toys. 
> 
> We return to the hospital where Jo ~~almost died~~ is now awake, knowing Dean was there, and having Sokka  & Lee at her side (as we last saw in Prompt 26 -- [Forever](http://archiveofourown.org/works/419638/chapters/699335)).
> 
>   
> 

  


She gets the best toys out there with her job. But.

Her favorite piece has been the same since fourth year.  
An iron pocket watch she inhereted from her dad in second year.   
That was given to him by her mother long before she was even born.

It has about sixteen hands on it now, but only Sokka and Lee know the hands are limitless. No one is quite sure how her Dad did it. But she can add or remove the little arms by removing or adding symbols with the tip of a wand. Sokka and Lee were the first two, and they've never come off.

She adds and subtracts people all the time. Especially during missions. But there is only one other hand that has never changed since being added on. Dean's. With that small african impala. Tiny pointed horns.

Dean's that she was looking at in the darkness of the hotel room. Sokka and Lee both asleep on chairs beside her bed still. She'd watched them for a long time before daring to move enough to get to her clothes. Nearly gritting her teeth to get through the pain. Of walking. Of sorting through things.

To get her pocket watch and back into bed.

Nearly exhausted by that effort alone.

So she can lay there in bed, in the hospital gown, staring through barely open eyelids at that tiny Impala hand, and how it is pointing, safely, to Home. He's very likely the only reason she's even alive. But he didn't stay to even be smug about it. Didn't stay to see if she woke up.

Because it's nothing to him. She is.

  



	37. Gift (#38)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Jo was gifted the amulet she mentioned clutching at the end of Prompt 26 ([Forever](http://archiveofourown.org/works/419638/chapters/699335)), back at maybe the 3/4ths of a- or -year mark of Round One of Jo & Dean. 
> 
> (Also, fills in when he figured out the globe and saw the first flicker!)
> 
>   
> 

  


"You aren't supposed to be awake yet." Such put upon, yet amused, complaining.

"Well, then you shouldn't be touching me." Jo wrinkled her nose even in the dark. "It's really distracting from the whole sleep thing. Can I move yet?"

"No. Not yet." There was something like a 'hmm,' followed by. "Okay, now."

Jo flopped back from not-sleeping on her side. Crushing a mass of blonde curls down, and into him, his chest, where he still braced up on one of his arms. As her hand felt to find the heavier token at the bottom of the cord, laying against her bare skin.

She'd woken when it has accidentally struck her clavical. But her fingers had only touched it, the heaviness, the horns, so known, so very well known, when she blurted, "But this is yours. You've never even--"

"You should have something of mine, too."

The globe. The globe that he figured out last week.

When he shown up at her ground zero and stomped on someone. At her side. An d she'd tried not to love the hell out of it, bleeding and stumbling and grinning, even though the shit storm that would await her might be huge.

He'd mentioned the light had flickered. She hadn't really planned for that.  
Though she'd known what she was doing. Tying a piece of her soul to the globe.  
Never looking back, even at the horrendously exquisite pain it had taken to craft.

A choice that broke every single cardinal rule of her current life.

Except the most important one.

Her left hand still clasped around his amulet, strung by him around her neck, (probably with some spell or another on it, if she knew him, and she really, really, did), she reached up with her right to drag his head down, beaming even in the darkness of the bedroom, saying "I love you something truly stupid, Dean Winchester," before kissing him.

  



	38. Smile (#39)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A reflection of sorts.
> 
>   
> 

  


Her favorite one of Sokka's is that over the moon one where he's won something, especially the moments when they were young, and he'd finally worked out just the right ingredients for another potion he made from scratch.

For Leah, it's one, wild with the wind in her hair, when they're running away from some prank they've just set up. Hand in hand. It's like the one when she comes screaming down to the pitch after a game. But better. Because it's only for her.

Dean's is, was, is, oddly enough, the obnoxious one where his eyebrows lift, when he's implying terrible sexist or sexy things, twisted up with the escape of a leer that'll come in a few seconds, no doubt. When even if she was about to laugh and call him a dog, she knew the whole time she was the only one is his world.

(And Steph's. One day, Steph's will be that slow, soft one. Tattered at the edges, and so damn tired, but bare to the bones real. That she shares with almost no one else. When they sit at the tables in The Broomsticks, watching their friends and lovers laughing across a room, while they talk of topics they can only talk to each other about.

The one, when talking about missions, Steph gets to mention the kids she's saved.

That's Jo's favorite smile of hers. Better even than the one she gives Sokka.)

  



	39. Innocence (#40)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She doesn't have much of it really.
> 
>   
> 

  


She doesn't have much of it really.

What she didn't stamp out in her childhood soaking up all the stories of demons and lives full of darkness for the betterment of the world, was taken in all the horrors she saw during her first three years in Elite. The true depths of darkness. The things the best school history books left out of their vague details.

But what she does have is a need to bend back the darkness, to rend and cut and tear and curse and swear and break, anything that threatens to ever touch the innocence in another man or woman's, or especially, child's, eyes.

Even if she'd never be succinct enough to put it that way herself.

  



	40. Clouds (#42)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place after Prompt 16 ([Weakness](http://archiveofourown.org/works/419638/chapters/699246)) and Prompt 17 ([?](http://archiveofourown.org/works/419638/chapters/699248)), where the end of Jo & Dean Round One happened without any words, as she vanished entirely.  
> 

  


She still goes home. After What Happened in Nebraska.

Correction. She still goes back to Dean's Flat.

The place where so much of her stuff is.

The place where the bed isn't made.  
With wrinkles that belong to other people.  
Those more carefree, trusting, unlied to people.

Everything had felt made of sunshine that morning.

Going back home. Taking Dean with her as a surprise.

And now. She wasn't even sure the sun ever existed to shine.

  



	41. Sky (#43)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The sky is always going to be Lee to her.
> 
>   
> 

  


The sky is always going to be Lee to her.

Jo was great on a broom, like all the kids who got to use brooms before school even started. But she was never once interested in quidditch. Anymore than she was ever interested in football or baseball or basketball for that matter either. They were for other people. Others.

Like Lee. Who loved it. And Lived it. And beamed so damn hard when she got in and when she took over, even before it was offical. Who looked her happiest in the air, in a screaming mad dive. Or while she was calling plays with the face Jo very much so named after that.

  



	42. Heaven (#44)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Jo gets her orders to move into the The Three Broomsticks as her new cover. Place two-three years after Lee's hospital thing, and about one after Jo's.
> 
>   
> 

  


She tells them what day she's moving to Hogsmeade in a letter. So cut and dry, they have to know it's a message. Because as much as she wants to just apparate over and talk about it, sometimes there really is too much damn work to do still between now and then, to be working at all on then.

And really then it's just depressing that neither of them writes her back.

For a whole three days. She'd have thought they'd be more excited. Which they do seem it, at least. But still. Three days. Filled with normal school updates. And how they'll be glad to meet her whenever she arrives. If it's not during class, or detention, or remedials. Or their meetings, staff or the ones they chair for kids.

Just when she started the stupidest amount os glum at them.

At what she'd apparently let herself dream for a second of Her Actual Work.

There was a knock on her door. Her actual door. Two nights before.

Which she went to wi th things piled under her arm. Frowning.

Her surprise have been amazing because she watched Lee nudge Sokka, saying "See I told you she'd buy it." and Sokka smile that bright, puppy-at-Christmas, yet still teasing her way, as he linked an arm around Lee, talking to her. "You can't seriously think we'd let you pack yourself." The look was so meaningful.

"We got people to cover our classes. We've seen what it's like where you live, and when you try to move it yourself, remember?""

Jo tried really, really hard not to smile. Pretty sure that she was failing entirely, as he shoved in, grabbing her shoulder, too, talking about where they should start. She didn't hear anything really. Except the white noise of their voices bouncing off the normally empty room (again; again, but never often) for the last time.

Her last time here, and she wouldn't be alone even then.

  



	43. Hell (#45)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not too long after Prompt 28 ([Sickness](http://archiveofourown.org/works/419638/chapters/699367)
> 
>   
> 

  


"You realize he's a liability now."

The implication had been in looks for over a week.  
Enough that she was getting very tired of being watched.

Like the child who might snap and break people's arms again.  
But she isn't twenty-one anymore. And she's not her then.

But she is the girl, who hates him a little more when --

"And you realize if you send anyone after him, I will send each piece of them back in a completely different box." Beat, without looking up from writing her newest case notes. "With a matching bow."

\-- she actually has to defend his ability to even be allowed to remember her.  
After what he's given her, that she'll now never ever be able to forget.

  



	44. Sun (#46)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean, after Jo & Dean Round One ends, when he realizes she's gone (and going without talking to him again). The matching piece to 47 -- Moon.
> 
>   
> 

  


She empties the flat of most of her things.

But it doesn't mean she empties the flat of herself.

He's still finding things months later. Hair ties, and bag of her favorite sweets that got accidentally shoved under the couch when he distracted her from case writing one evening months ago. An earring behind the toliet that she'd been looking for the match to for half the year, because she said accio was losers who weren't willing to try and remember what they did with things.

One of her shirts in his closet, rumpled up in a corner, where it must have missed the basket and bounced. He stills swears for a moment she's there when autumn hits and the house smells like it, but there are no windows open anywhere. Blonde hair, in his shower, couch, bed, carpet, clothes. At least he knows what to do with the firewhiskey she left on top of the fridge.

Everything, everything goes away. It takes some time. But it goes.  
Until all that is left is the globe on the bookshelf across the room.  
The one he keeps telling himself he'll move. He'll lose. He'll--

But it never ever moves. And he never forgets its there.  
Even if he tries to go as long as possible without looking.

  



	45. Moon (#47)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jo, after Jo & Dean Round One ends, when she realizes she's gone (and going without talking to him again). The matching piece to 47 -- Moon.
> 
>   
> 

  


Her flat is the same as she left it.

The same way it's been the last year she wasn't here.  
The same way it had been the year before that when she was.

There're things that still make her remember too much. The first day she has to dust, well, everything. And then it seems like everywhere she turns, even though nothing of his is here, has ever been here, because she hasn't even been here, that he's everywhere.

She's missing jars of things in her kitchen cabinet she knows she bought in other countries, but that never came to this house. The sun is more glaring through her bedroom window at seven am than it ever was facing a different direction. The way the front door and bathroom never opens by itself. The bed never shifts.

There was a button on the tv remote she was slamming confusedly, until she realized, this controler was black and not grey. She comes home to find a curse book, she was sure was related to this case, and gets thr ough two shelves before realizing it's not going to be in her bookcase.

There's nothing here to remind her. There was nothing to keep.

Except. Except a single necklace. An Egyptian safegaurd.

That she never once even considers taking off.

  



	46. Waves (#48)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bring the amulet up through the break-up to the current day & Order of the Jobberknoll meetings.
> 
>   
> 

  


She still wears the amulet everyday.

Well, almost everyday. Every day except one a month now.

See she took it off once. On a very specific day. Her friends had moved back into her life. No, she'd moved back into theirs. It wasn't the same as letters and weekend trips and pop-over apparation for drinks and laughs. Actually into Hogsmeade.

Settling in. Becoming the ruse. Becoming her old self.

Becoming apparantly a cat rangler, if she actually had to run a meeting.  
So she tried to prep for this meeting thing and she'd been standing in the bathroom.

Nice boots, amazing shirt, Sokka yelling from the downstairs as her fingers had latched on to the necklace bobbling just at the fabric of her shirt. Slipping in and out, not really matching at all. Not really matching her life at all now. Six years later. And with Sokka and Lee.

Maybe it was time to let go. Let go of holding on to nothing.

Becoming the person here, who s miled when Lee suddenly bounded in.  
Who truly truly smiled. Making her nose wrinkle and her copper eyes shimmer.  
As she reached up and pulled it over her head, leaving it on the bathroom sink.  
Saying it just didn't match anything today. In such a teenage fashion.

Even if her eyes lingered on it for a second, before she walked out.

Discussing the kinds of kids Lee thought would be showing up.

Not knowing how naked, and relieved she'd feel, when Dean pulled the hood of his cloak down two hours later.

  



	47. Hair (#49)

Post third year and truly epic fiasco her head witnessed, Jo's hair hasn't changed much ever. There's so much history in her hair sometimes, it seems truly silly.

It goes to about her shoulderblades (she always hears her dad's voice, teasing her, tugging a curl, about how this would be so easy to pull in a hand-to-hand fight), more blonde-gold in the summer, and faintly darker in the winter (and how that would stand out in the night in either)

In Elite Training that was probably the weirdest part really. It's such a known part of herself, that it's more disorienting that height or size. Not having her hair brush her shoulders, or having hair touching her that doesn't feel anything like anything hers had ever once felt like.

It was Dean who coined referencing how her hair had a life and opinion of its own. How one day it would be a riot of curls, and others it would be mostly straight, and others still some combination of both with only curling sections at the bottom. In ways that had little to do with showers or weather.

 

These things all come back to her at the oddest moments, brushing her hair, styling, going out and doing her job. But she still never changes it. It's a part of her that really has never needed to be.


	48. Supernova (#50)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Culmination of all the lead up.

This is what happens when Dean Winchester's lips touch hers.

 

The obliteration of every lie. Every. Single. Lie.  
Every single night and all the words she told herself.  
The erasure of six years of moving on and moving forward.

 

And maybe it's that she's old enough finally, that when she pulls away, when she's staring at his mouth, before the his words come (the ones that will change her world again, like a supernova themselves), that she knows. Who she is again. With the taste of Dean Winchester in her mouth.

That she isn't a child. Anymore. That she'll never rally know when she stopped being one. That she's survived loving him, without him, this long, telling herself she didn't. And she'll go on surviving loving him, without him, even if she knows that truth, and this is just whatever it is. A fluke with a cowboy hat.

But she's old enough now to just sit with it, just live with it.

And find a way to keep going on, without falling down.  
It'll be another part of her. Forever. Like her blood.  
Like her friends. Like hunting and magic.


End file.
